On the Buddhist Thought of Tamaki Kōshirō

Abstract

I attended Tokyo University, enrolling in the Department of Indian Philosophy of the Faculty of Letters from 1969 to 1971, the master’s program in the graduate school’s Indian philosophy curriculum from 1972 to 1974, and its doctoral program from 1974 to 1975. I then dropped out of the doctoral program and took up the position of assistant at the department. During this period the three giants of this field, NAKAMURA Hajime 中村元 (1911–1999), HIRAKAWA Akira 平川彰 (1915–2002), and TAMAKI Kōshirō 玉城康四郎 (1915–1999), were teaching in the Department of Indian Philosophy, and I took their courses and received their instruction. The scholarly style of TAMAKI Kōshirō was more speculative than demonstrative. Rather than being an objective investigation of Buddhist thought, it was an attempt to construct what we might call “Tamaki philosophy.” HIRAKAWA Akira observed that such a method, even if it was good for Tamaki himself, did not attract students. But even so, developing an original philosophy would have been beyond the scope of Tamaki’s concerns. Yet, if his lived quest in the pursuit of his own truth had in some sense provided inspiration for younger people, this would have been of value. Tamaki in this way, coupled with his skillful narrative, had many fans from the general public. While HIRAKAWA Akira’s Buddhalogy was popular among experts, Professor TAMAKI Kōshirō’s Buddhalogy received support from a broader range.